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Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Interview With Sports Book Author J.P. Hoomstra

Author
of The 50 Greatest Dodgers Games of All
Time

What inspired you to write this
book? Being around the ballpark I hear talk, and read blogs, about the best
Dodger games ever. Yet somehow, no one had ever sat down and written a book
about the 50 Greatest Games of All Time. It seemed overdue. This book is the
first of its kind.

How did you go about selecting the
top 50 Dodger games out of 125 seasons that spanned 10,000 games? For
each game I considered things like drama, historical significance, significance
within each season, and the individual acts of greatness that took place in
each game. I put a master list together, tinkered with it, and ultimately went
with my gut.

How
are the Dodgers different than most other baseball teams or sports franchises?There are more similarities than differences, but for the purposes of this
book the differences were easy to find. The Dodgers have been around way longer
than most teams (125 years since joining the National League). The number of
people who have worn their uniform, or worked for the Dodgers in another
capacity, is staggering. One was Jackie Robinson. They’ve called the two
largest media markets in the United States home, which is rare if not unique.

Did
you choose a monumental game like Jackie Robinson breaking the sports color
barrier or the first-ever televised game or did you choose something
significant like a perfect game or a World Series win as your greatest game?I’d rather people read the book to find out, but let’s just say I had my Top
3 games picked out before the other 47 games -- and I didn’t decide the order
of the Top 3 immediately. They were (in no particular order) Jackie Robinson
breaking the color barrier, a perfect game, and a World Series win.

You report on the team for the Los
Angeles News Group. What is it like to go see your favorite team play every day?
Because I report on the team every day, I’m not a Dodger fan. You can’t be
as a reporter; it just doesn’t work like that. They’re my favorite team to the
extent that they are my subject. That said, what’s it like? The Dodger Stadium
experience is 100 percent better when you’re not fighting traffic in the couple
hours leading up to the game. (Reporters usually arrive four hours or more
before the first pitch.)

Who are your top five greatest
Dodgers? I could interpret this question a couple ways. My five
greatest Dodgers to work with as long as I’ve been covering the team: Miguel
Rojas, Luis Cruz, A.J. Ellis, Dee Gordon and J.P. Howell. The top five of
all-time in terms of baseball accomplishments: Robinson, Sandy Koufax, Zack
Wheat, Duke Snider and Clayton Kershaw (provided he keeps this up).

My
dad grew up in Brooklyn rooting for the beloved Bums, is there a feeling in LA
that the team is still a NY transplant that broke the hearts of millions like
my dad, or is that part of their history now a distant memory for just a
handful?There’s really no in-between feeling on this topic from my
experience. They’re either an L.A. team or a Brooklyn team in your heart. It’s
not a Brooklyn team to most of us in Los Angeles, not just because it’s Los
Angeles but because most people living in Los Angeles were born after the move.
Of course that wasn’t always the case, but it is now. I see hipsters wearing
the Brooklyn “B” hat around town and I doubt they carry any heartbreak.

What
challenges did you have in putting your book together?The two
biggest challenges were making sure I didn’t miss any big games, particularly
from the late 19th/early 20th centuries, and making sure the book had some
balance (between eras, between playoff/non-playoff games, between games that
were dramatic for how they ended and games that featured dramatic individual
performances). Beyond that, doing research and interviews, and making old
baseball games readable to a new audience, are all easier said than done.

Any
advice for a struggling writer?The more you read and write, the
better of a writer you’ll be. If you’re constantly reading good writing, not
only will you be inspired and challenged but your brain will absorb new words,
and new ideas for constructing sentences and paragraphs and stories. Challenge yourself
to write something you’ve never written before. Don’t worry about who’s
reading. Rinse, wash, repeat, and take breaks to clear your mind. Have fun.

About Me

Brian Feinblum, the creator and author of BookMarketingBuzzBlog, is the chief marketing officer for the nation's largest book promotions firm, Media Connect (www.Media-Connect.com), formerly Planned Television Arts, and has been involved in book publicity and marketing since 1989. He has served several book publishing companies as a publicist, book editor, and acquisitions editor. Brian, who earned a BA in English from Brooklyn College, became a published author in 1995 when he penned The Florida Homeowner, Condo and Co-Op Handbook. He resides in Westchester, New York with his wife, two young children, and an English Bulldog.